Wildcat Strike

Two disparate beefs to get off my chest today. (NCAA sports and Crimea; can't get much more disparate than that.) I will try to keep both brief.

I read so you don't have to. I know you're busy. Specifically I turn to page 18 of the report from the Chicago regional office of the National Labor Relations Board ruling that allows, for the moment and subject to appeal, Northwestern University football players to form a union.

On this particular page 18, I note the director of the Chicago NLRB's ruling that Northwestern's scholarship football players "are not primarily students." (Sorry, walk-on fourth-string cornerbacks, yer out.)

"Players spend 50 to 60 hours a week on football during a training camp before school starts," writes that NLRB regional director, Peter Ohr. He adds, "They also dedicate 40 to 50 hours per week on football during the four-month season."

Ipso facto, per the delightfully pragmatic Mr. Ohr: "Not only is this more hours than many undisputed full-time employees work at their jobs, it is also many more hours than players spend on the studies."

Who knew?

And the distant wailings and lamentations from the NCAA panjandrums watching their cash cow saunter from Mrs. O'Leary's barn burn my ears all the way from their Indianapolis headquarters.

But wait, you defenders of the sacred student-athlete—or, as the NLRB's Chicago director might describe them, the athlete-sometime-maybe-student—all you boosters, all you car dealers and real estate developers and Chamber of Commerce members in Austin, Texas and Auburn, Alabama, and Columbus, Ohio, and Lincoln, Nebraska, there is more.

For I also read somewhat regularly the website of the Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sports. And this organization informs me that—just to be topical—of the 16 college basketball teams that I will admittedly be keen to watch play each other in this weekend's NCAA tournament, the vaunted university of Wisconsin—to take just one example—graduates 44 percent of its basketball playing "student-athletes." Of course, the other 56 percent go on to make grand money in the NBA.

Sadly, no.

But just as Alabama will always have Mississippi to look down upon in all things social, political, economic, academic, and athletic, the Badgers of Wisconsin can peer down their noses at the University of Connecticut, where a whopping 8 percent of its men's basketball player don the tasseled cap and gown. (For the record, Dayton graduates 100 percent of its men's basketball athletes—reason enough to root for the upstart, Johnnie Dawkins-slaying Flyers for a guy who remembers Donnie May—and Baylor, Michigan, Stanford, and Kentucky [!?!] all rise above the 80th percentile. The rest, meh.)

Oh but wait, you say, we were talking about college football, weren't we? Glad you asked. How 'bout them recent National Championship Florida State Seminoles? Well, a good 42 percent of that school's gridders get tomahawk-chopped right out of the halls of academe before graduation. Worse, among Florida State's African-American football players—and you know they don't play hardly at all—only an even half receive a diploma.

I am guessing by now that it would not surprise you to learn that at perennial powerhouses Alabama, USC, and Oklahoma, the football-player graduation rates come in at 53 percent, 53 percent, and 51 percent, respectively. (For the record, 97 percent of all Northwestern football players receive a diploma—no wonder the team stinks. And just because I recognize how many of you out there are Duke haters, the Blue Devils football teams graduates a mere 52 percent of its players.)

But, no, these guys don't deserve to be paid. Move along, nothing to see here.

If this is the end of the beginning for the NCAA cartel, there will be no tears shed here. What will replace it … well, that's another column.

And in the meanwhile, you know what? Crimea is all too depressing after this. And when it comes to depression, Vladimir Putin's got nothing on Nick Saban or Urban Meyer.

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